ClydeStyle

Category: Gun violence

  • History repeats, and we still miss the message

    This is blog 3 of 5 in the history series, and the question today is how you feel about it.

    So, a few weeks back, we had another mass shooting of sorts, his time on a military base in Georgia. As of July 31, 2025, there have been 268 mass shootings in the United States, resulting in 262 fatalities and 1,161 injuries. Several daily newspapers are keeping count.

    Clearly, the media is not reporting all of them, I would imagine, because they don’t want to scare the public.

    The worst part of the shootings over than the deaths would be the lack of action taken by Congress to produce laws to make us safer.

    During the organized crime epidemic of the 1920s and 30s, we not only had mass shootings, but the police had a difficult time dealing with criminals with Tommy guns.

    So, in 1934, the National Firearms Act was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This act put a huge tax on civilian ownership, which discouraged sales.

    With so many mass shootings now and the fact that automatic weapons are being used in most cases, we need stricter gun laws. However, the gun lobby has deep pockets, and America’s greed has allowed its votes to be bought for the right price.

    This all means that we have had the answer of what o do about gun violence since 1934. We’re not doing it because our lawmakers have sold their souls for profit and purchased a one-way ticket to hell!

    Can you imagine saying to the parents of the Uvalde, TX school shooting, “Sorry, but the lobbyists gave me a six-figure check for my vote.”

    Clearly, we now have the wrong people in government, and they have completely violated our trust. Voting won’t ever fix this mess because both political parties are guilty. We desperately need an intervention that doesn’t destroy our land.

  • El Paso shooter gets 90 consecutive life sentences. For what?

    One of the many mass shooters in America recently went through sentencing for shooting up a Walmart, killing 20 plus people and wounding many others. We were outraged when we heard about it, and the usual things were said, like, is the shooter dead? Did they identify the dead? What type of weapon was used? Was he a formal employee of Walmart?

    Prayers and thoughts were sent out by millions who heard about the deaths and conversations began around the country regarding whether the death penalty should be brought back and when we would get stiffer gun laws.

    Chatter, then begins to die down until the next shooting kindles it back up. Finally, the El Paso shooter gets sentenced, and it took multiple days to do it. Our country is so juvenile when it comes to things like this. Although his court days are far from over, he was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences. Why? It’s almost like each sentence was a shot to his head, and the person with the trigger just kept pulling it to the tune of 90 consecutive life sentences.

    What is the purpose of this? It won’t bring anyone back to life. It is not even equal punishment. And rehabilitation is definitely not an agenda item here. We’ll just toss out life sentences like coupons and hope that they satisfy the families of the deceased.

    This is madness. Of course, we need tougher gun laws. In fact, we need to eliminate guns from our society, but that won’t happen because there is money to be made selling guns.

    Until we begin to look at our crimes as a mirror and see who we truly are instead of acting as if those criminals are just “bad apples,” we will continue to lack the compassion it takes to heal and rehabilitate the under belly of our society. These shooters did not plan to be mass shooters in kindergarten. It’s not an excuse, but circumstances happened, and we could trace back through the lives of the shooters and find the points of trouble.

    Stricter penalties like death have proven to be abusive, and many die who are innocent, especially those of color. We need to change the narrative in America by acknowledging our sins and fighting injustice where it occurs. If not, eventually, we will all be killed in a mass shooter attack or be in jail for 90 consecutive life sentences as the shooter.

  • Have gun, will travel

    This phrase from the 50s is all about being ready to do anything. There was even a show about it back then, but the makers of this show would have never imagined that their callous attitude about the use of guns would be trumped by the views held currently about gun use.

    I wonder how many folks believe the founding fathers were thinking of automatic weapons when they wrote in the constitution for us to have the right to bear arms?

    What is more scary is that in recent months, there have been some really senseless shootings. There have been people shot for going to the wrong house, getting in the wrong car, standing around doing nothing, and going to a sweet 16 party. It seems as though the school shootings, church shootings, and other mass shootings are old news.

    Have we gotten bored with shootings?

    And then, Congress can’t seem to find the courage to solve this very simple problem. The answer is not as easy as changing gun laws or even outlawing certain guns because there are too many guns available.

    If we take the position that we all have to die of something or you feel that as long as it is not your kid getting shot, then who cares? It is easy to see how votes can be purchased for a price, and the NRA has deep pockets. Their average spending is around 3.2 million per year, buying the votes of senators and other law makers.

    The level of hypocrisy has to stop. Clearly, the answer will not come on a federal level. It has to take place state by state. Local organizing is the answer, and the time to do it is now. Have political power, will travel!

  • We have problems we don’t want to be fixed

    Last month Tyre Nichols was funeralized in the usual fashion of a victim of police violence. Al Sharpton did the Eulogy. Various dignitaries spoke out against police violence including Vice President Kamala Harris. We always talk a good game when these things happen but history has shown that when a problem can easily be fixed and we don’t take the steps to correct the problem, then the truth is we don’t want to fix the problem.

    America rules the world in violence and in creating weapons for violence. One of the many lessons we should have learned from our civil war is that we were not mature enough and do not value life enough to use weapons. We should have learned that our nation is not stable and we will always turn these weapons against ourselves.

    When the drugs that our government poured into urban areas back in the 80s got out of hand (which was the plan), we created the war on drugs and we put many Black and Brown men in prison. Even though cocaine was heavily used in the suburbs by whites, they could possess 280 grams of cocaine and a Black person could have the same amount of crack cocaine (or any drug), and the person of color would automatically get 10 years in prison even if that was their first offense. The reason? Mandatory minimums. This is a rule by Congress to stop the trafficking of certain drugs in urban areas and a judge had no choice but to enforce the mandatory minimum.

    With guns and policing this principle of mandatory minimums would deter crimes if they are enforced. What if you were a gun owner and your son took one of your guns and shot up his school? If the gun owner would suffer a mandatory minimum of 10 years, I would bet his son would never get near his guns. Or what if the seller of the gun was held accountable? There would be no shortcuts in background checks then.

    What if police officers got mandatory minimums for lying on their reports? Ten years for falsified documents, 3 years for not turning on your body camera, and 5 years for witnessing any wrongdoing by an officer and not reporting it or intervening to stop it. Shooting an unarmed suspect when you should have used any number of non-lethal options like pepper spray, tasers, and nightsticks should be a mandatory 20 years. There would instantly be a great decrease in police shootings and school shootings if this plan was implemented.

    Of course, the best plan would be to get rid of handguns and automatic weapons for good. The police would not need to carry them and they could adopt the same plan Japan has. In 1989 they had their last mass shooting by banning weapons for civilians. Their police force carries no weapons but they all have been trained in martial arts. When will our government feel that we are too civilized for weapons?

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  • Our mass shootings are home grown

    Every time there is a mass shooting eventual the conversation turns to something being done about mental health. But nobody is really talking about making meaningful mental health legislation no more than a person who hits themselves in the head and says, “I could have had a V8?” — they didn’t mean that either!

    You see, America has always needed to take mental health serious. The founding father weren’t smart enough to consider the effects life would have on people through just living it. Our country was birthed after the Revolutionary War. Before the flag could get used to flying in the sky, it was layer more across caskets. We tried to morn but the puritanical concepts we labored under would encourage you to be strong as defined by keeping a “stiff upper lip!” No time for weeping, crying was a sign of weakness and to carry on with grief beyond the funeral did not fit the societal norm.

    As a result we kept things to ourselves and turned our anger inward. This caused a great silent depression in the US. Our solution: Medication! We tried to take pills for everything. Fast forward to today and we now have an extremely angry, entitled, spoiled, immature nation who uses privileges so prideful that will can kill without remorse. And the killers aren’t old people, retired vets, abused middle aged folks — it’s kids! They haven’t even been here long enough to be so angry — yet they are.

    Our society creates these characters. I know I always thought that America was invincible because we spend much money on defense to protect the outside of us. We never invest on the inside so that’s where our cancer grows.

    Our country will never starve itself to death. Nor be wiped out by a disease. We won’t lack water or any other resource — we will just neglect ourselves to death. America is the largest ocean, but it’s citizenship lives in aquariums.

  • Enough is enough: To live by the sword is to die by the sword

    You know, I wasn’t going to say anything about the mass shootings. I was hoping that lawmakers would develop a conscience and do the right thing for the people — atleast that’s what Democracy is supposed to be about. A system of government that is by the people and for the people.

    Clearly everyone sees this as a problem. We have had well over 200 mass shootings this year. Mass shooting is defined by the number of people killed. Somewhere, someone came up with the idea that if atleast 4 people get shot, they don’t have to die, it constitute a mass shooting. And we specialize in them.

    Congress has the task of representing “we the people” and sadly the interest of the people is not the interest of Congress. This is not a new problem as lobbying groups and corporate special interest tend to rule our country with the almighty dollar. Part of congress believes that a good guy with a gun trumps a bad guy with a gun. Clearly that’s not the case.

    There were 19 small town officers in Uvalde at the school harassing parents. They must have been afraid to go in so chances are more kids were killed than should have been. There have been copycat shooters in other states while Congress tries to figure out what to do. Our system is failing.

    Meanwhile, Canada is strengthening it’s gun laws because it is the right thing to do. Some countries, like Japan, decided that they had outgrew handguns and following a mass shooting in 1989, the country decided to band guns from their society.

    If America was not so greedy we could solve the gun problem. We have become masters at making money off the suffering of others. A statement needs to be made at the voting polls. What are you prepared to do?